Populism and propaganda in US culture industries

Ever since billionaire Donald Trump declared his candidacy for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination in June 2015, politicians (both Democratic and Republican), the media, and the global public have expressed an escalating concern with what Adorno might have called the “mild lunacy” of the man. No doubt the presumptive Republican nominee (at the time of writing) expresses many of the traits of the anti-democratic demagogue that Adorno isolates: he turns his personality into a commodity for sale; he has won supporters by “playing upon their unconscious mechanisms” rather than by presenting them with rational arguments; he has depended on the “bogey men” of Muslims and Mexicans; and he has favored “oratorical exhibitions” (including those driven home by his “vulgarian” fingers) rather than what Adorno calls “discursive logic.”

Read more of Rodney Taveira and Aaron Nyerges's article published by The Australasian Journal of American Studies.

Honours Coordinator and Lecturer in American Studies, United States Studies Centre

Rodney Taveira was awarded his PhD in English from the University of Sydney in 2010 and has published on contemporary American fiction, book reviews, and television, and the interrelation of cinema, photography, painting, and literature. His areas of expertise include American literature, American and European film (silent era to present), US television, comedy in the US, US popular culture, and queer and sexuality studies.

Aaron Nyerges is a Lecturer in American Studies at the US Studies Centre at the University of Sydney. He holds a PhD in English from the University of Sydney and a BA from the State University of New York. His articles have appeared in Textual Practice, Sound Studies, the Australasian Journal of American Studies, and the Journal of Popular Culture.